Today’s CS:GO patch is as big as they come. Valve have reintroduced aged hostage map cs_militia, and sworn in a host of major tweaks to the way hostage rescue mode works.

From today, hostage positions will be randomly assigned at the beginning of a match. Once found, hostages will need to be picked up and carried by CTs at a reduced movement rate, rather than led on foot. Players will need to hold +use for four seconds to pick up their charge, or equip a rescue kit to decrease the time to three seconds.

The updated mode also features a reduced round timer, which is extended when the first hostage is picked up. CTs win a round when the first hostage is rescued.

cs_office, cs_assault and ccs_italy have all been tweaked to accommodate random hostage spawn points, and money rewards have been rebalanced. What’s more, hostages now indicate whether they are above or below you on the radar.

Outside of hostage rescue, Valve have made one other significant change to the fundaments of Counter-Strike - the action of defusing a bomb will now end if the players turns their view too far from facing it.

As for the CS:GO Community Support Passes we reported on yesterday? Valve have removed all reference to their officially hosted community map servers. In its place, they’ve left us a single line:

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